The Artist: One of the leading figures of Venetian painting, Carpaccio is above all famous for his large decorative cycles undertaken for the various confraternities, or scuole in the city: the cycle of the life of Saint Ursula for the Scuola di S. Orsola (1490–95); that with scenes from the lives of Saints Jerome, Augustine, and George for the Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni (1502–ca. 1508); and that dedicated to Saint Stephen for the Scuola degli Albanesi (ca. 1500–1510). These show a narrative invention and a richness of detail that he brought as well to his devotional paintings, of which The Metropolitan Museum’s Meditation on the Passion of Christ is among his masterpieces. The naturalistic detail of these paintings was especially admired by the great nineteenth-century critic John Ruskin. Perhaps his most significant altarpiece, of the Presentation in the Temple, dates from 1510 and was painted for the church of San Giobbe (Accademia, Venice). He was admired as a portraitist but few survive: the outstanding example is his portrait of a knight in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, of 1510. His early style is much indebted to the example of Giovanni Bellini, and his later work reveals an attempt to respond to the great atmospheric unity and chromatic richness of the works of Giorgione and Titian—yet the consistency of his style is such that it is not always easy to date his most individual works, including The Met’s painting.

The Picture: The first record of this picture, a keystone in the history of devotional painting in fifteenth-century Venice, is in 1632, when it is listed in the collection of Roberto Canonici in Ferrara. At the time, it bore a spurious signature identifying it as the work of Andrea Mantegna; the signature was removed in 1945 (see Pease 1945). Another picture by Carpaccio, showing the Entombment of Christ (now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin)—but on canvas and measuring 145 x 185 cm—was also owned by Canonici and also bore a false Mantegna signature. Whether the two pictures were painted for the same foundation, such as a confraternity, and where such an institution may have been, has been much discussed (Hartt 1992 and Blass-Simmen 1993). They do not seem to be contemporary—the Berlin painting is unquestionably later—but their themes are related. Moreover, they have in common that they were not conceived as traditional illustrations of a canonical event from the life of Christ, but are set in an extensive landscape incorporating details intended as prompts that would actively engage the viewer/worshipper’s imagination, who would bring to bear his or her familiarity with exegetical and devotional literature and practice—an extension of the devotio moderno, with its emphasis on the interior life of the devout and perhaps best exemplified by Thomas à Kempis’s widely read The Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418). In their discursive, poetical approach, the two paintings are products of a new kind of devotional painting, the origins of which are to be found in the work of Giovanni Bellini (see Keith Christiansen, "Bellini and the Meditational poesia," Artibus et Historiae, Art in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Context, Practices, Developments: Proceedings of a Conference in Honour of Peter Humfrey [University of Saint Andrews, May 3–6, 2012], part 1, no. 67 [XXIV], 2013, pp. 9–20).

In 1940 Frederick Hartt wrote an article that remains the basis of all subsequent interpretations of The Met's picture. He identified the two figures flanking Christ as the great early Christian theologian Jerome (ca. 347–420) and the Old Testament prophet Job, who in Venice had the unusual status of a saint to which a major Franciscan church was dedicated (San Giobbe). Jerome is easily identified by his constant companion, the lion, shown in the background, before the cave opening. A rosary of vertebrae hangs from a marble pedestal on which two books rest (one is open). These are objects of devotional prayer and meditation, and the saint’s gaze, directed toward the viewer, makes him the key to the theme of the picture: he is the exemplar of the penitent viewer/worshipper contemplating the picture as well as the guide to its exegetical interpretation. Job can be identified by his similarity to the figure in Giovanni Bellini’s altarpiece painted for the church of San Giobbe (now in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice). Hartt associated the theme of the picture with a well-known passage from the book of Job (19:25–26)—" I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth"—and with Saint Jerome’s commentary on that book that occurs in a letter written to his follower Paulinus (the letter is quoted below). Hartt read the letters on the fractured marble base upon which Job sits as "Israel," "that my redeemer liveth," and "19," referring to the passage from Job. He also believed that the letters on the fragmented backrest of the marble throne could be read: "Israel" and "crown." "Crown" would refer to the crown of thorns that rests against the base of the throne, while "Israel" would refer to Christ sitting on the throne of Israel. However, in 2013 a detailed re-examination of the inscriptions was kindly undertaken by Evelyn Cohen, who contacted other leading Hebrew scholars, working with Andrea Bayer and Dorothy Mahon at The Met. Their examination confirms that the letters are, in fact, mostly pseudo-Hebrew. Only the word "Israel," found on both the throne and the base on which Job sits, can be identified with certainty. These Hebrew scholars have noted that the word "Israel" does not appear in the book of Job. Thus the texts on which Hartt based his interpretation are not confirmed by the lettering.

Yet, despite the absence of the inscribed texts, Hartt was surely correct in his understanding of the painting. Jerome commented on Job 19:25 in the letter (LIII) to Paulinus, bishop of Nola: "Then, as for Job, that pattern of patience, what mysteries are there not contained in his discourses? Commencing in prose the book soon glides into verse and at the end once more reverts to prose. By the way in which it lays down propositions, assumes postulates, adduces proofs, and draws inferences, it illustrates all the laws of logic. Single words occurring in the book are full of meaning. To say nothing of other topics, it prophesies the resurrection of men’s bodies at once with more clearness and with more caution than any one has yet shewn. 'I know,' Job says, 'that my redeemer liveth, and that at the last day I shall rise again from the earth; and I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. This my hope is stored up in my own bosom.'" (see Philip Schaff, ed., The Principal Works of St. Jerome, 1892, letter LIII, p. 99)

As Hartt observed, the themes of Death and Resurrection are also developed in the landscape, which contrasts a barren hill above the cave (or tomb) opening on the left with the lush landscape and city view on the right. He also noted a contrast between the dead tree and the thriving plants, among which is perched a goldfinch, symbolic, like the upward-flying bird, of the Resurrection. On the left a leopard has captured a doe and is watched by a wolf while a doe or fawn grazes below. On the right a stag escapes a leopard. As noted by Gentili (1991), the leopard has the spots of a sinner, while the significance of the stag derives from Psalm 42:1–2: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" Two rabbits and a weasel as well as a red parrot are seen in the grass. The figures promenading in the landscape wear turbans and are evidently intended to refer to infidels. The viewer/worshipper takes in these details one by one and then connects them through association with literary texts and devotional practice.

The Berlin painting takes as its subject the preparation of Christ’s body for burial, but it elaborates this theme as an episodic narrative incorporating meditational motifs (for a particularly detailed analysis of this picture, see Mori 1990). In the foreground, immediately behind a ridge of rocks, with a stalk of hollyhock—often a symbol of Salvation—Christ’s body is prominently laid out on a marble slab (the stone of unction, a venerated red marble slab that was brought to Constantinople in the twelfth century; Andrea Mantegna’s Dead Christ in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, is the most famous depiction of Christ’s dead body laid out for ceremonial anointment). The setting is a valley strewn with broken funerary monuments, bones, and decomposing bodies—a cemetery—thereby introducing the theme of death and the passage of time. In the background, to one side, two turbaned figures laboriously open the tomb in which Christ’s body will be placed while a third—Joseph of Arimathea—sets down a basin of water to wash his body, thereby connecting the figure of Christ in the foreground with the narrative based on the Gospel account (Mark 15:42-47). On the other side are the mourning figures of two Maries and Saint John. A hermit figure—as in The Met's painting, it is evidently the Old Testament Job—sits in contemplation beneath a tree, some of whose branches are dead while others are in full foliage (possibly a reference to Job 14:7–9). Job was viewed as an exemplar of patience and his suffering and humiliation as a prefiguration of Christ’s. His presence in the picture has been taken as the cue to its exegetical content. The three crosses of Calvary are seen on the hill at left; lower down on the slope is an abandoned shed and two shepherds, while through an opening can be seen people going about their business: contrasting images of death and life. Thus, as in The Met's painting, the viewer/worshipper encounters different sites for meditation as he or she explores the picture.

Blass-Simmen (2006) has shown that in painting the two pictures Carpaccio resorted to a number of visual sources. It has long been recognized that the poses of the Maries and Saint John in the Berlin painting derive from an invention of Mantegna known through an engraving of the Entombment. Many of the animals in The Met's Meditation and the tomb monuments in the Berlin painting depend from pattern books. The representation of Job in both pictures is very close, suggesting the use of a common model. Blass-Simmen proposes, hypothetically, that both pictures were painted for the Scuola di San Giobbe in Venice. Although there is no proof for this—and their seventeenth-century provenance from Ferrara might be thought to argue against it (Sgarbi 1994), both pictures adopt a similar meditative approach to devotional painting and are in this sense complementary, even if they turn out not to have been painted as pendants, in the strict sense.

The Date: The approach Carpaccio adopts in these two very singular paintings has been compared to that of Giovanni Bellini, in his Sacred Allegory in the Uffizi, Florence (Robertson 1968), and to the great painting of Saint Francis in the Wilderness, now in the Frick Collection, New York. Although The Met's picture has been dated as early as the 1480s (Lauts 1962) and as late as about 1508 (Zeri and Gardner 1973), in view of its conspicuous debt to Bellini, which extends to the richly descriptive style of the landscape, a date of ca. 1485–90 seems reasonable—five or ten years after that usually assigned to Bellini’s Saint Francis.

Keith Christiansen 2014

Inscription: Signed (lower right, on cartellino): vjctorjs carpattjj / venettj opus [legible only with infrared]; inscribed extensively with phrases in distorted Hebrew letters; those that can be read are: (on throne) "with a cry", "Israel", "crown"; (right, on stone block) "Israel", "that my redeemer liveth", "19" (phrase and number from Job 19:25)

Roberto Canonici, Ferrara (by 1627); the Canonici family, Ferrara (until about 1850); Sir William Neville Abdy, 2nd Baronet, London and The Elms, Newdigate, Dorking (by 1881–d. 1910; his estate sale, Christie's, London, May 5, 1911, no. 92, as "A Pietà," by Carpaccio, for £12,950 to Sulley); [Sulley and Co., London, 1911; sold to The Met]

London. Royal Academy of Arts. "Winter Exhibition," January–March 1881, no. 188 (as "A Pietà," by Mantegna, lent by Sir William N. Abdy).

Paris. Musée du Louvre. "Tableaux, statues et objets d'art au profit de l'œuvre des orphelins d'Alsace-Lorraine," 1885, no. 322 (as "Pietà," by Mantegna, lent by Sir William Abdy).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Art Treasures of the Metropolitan," November 7, 1952–September 7, 1953, no. 86.

Art Institute of Chicago. "Masterpieces of Religious Art," July 15–August 31, 1954, unnumbered cat. (p. 25).

New York. Wildenstein & Co., Inc. "Masterpieces: A Memorial Exhibition for Adele R. Levy," April 6–May 7, 1961, no. 4.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 16–November 1, 1970, unnumbered cat. (p. 18).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries," November 14, 1970–June 1, 1971, no. 197.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Nudes in Landscapes: Four Centuries of a Tradition," May 18–August 5, 1973, no catalogue.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Venetian Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum," May 1–September 2, 1974, no catalogue.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Art in Renaissance Venice, 1400–1515: Paintings and Drawings from the Museum's Collections," November 8, 2011–February 5, 2012, no catalogue.

LOAN OF THIS WORK IS RESTRICTED.

Inventory of the Collection of Roberto Canonici. 1632 [published in Giuseppe Campori, "Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventarii inediti," Modena, 1870, p. 117; Getty no. I-3015], lists this painting as a work by Mantegna.

Jean Paul Richter. Letter. January 7, 1881 [published in "Italienische Malerei der Renaissance im Briefwechsel von Giovanni Morelli und Jean Paul Richter," Baden-Baden, 1960, p. 142], calls it a very early work by Cima.

Paul Kristeller. Andrea Mantegna. London, 1901, p. 455, lists it among works attributed to Mantegna and calls the figure at the right Isaiah.

Claude Phillips. "An Unrecognized Carpaccio." Burlington Magazine 19 (April–September 1911), pp. 144–52, ill., attributes it to Carpaccio and calls it "Meditation on the Passion"; questions the suggestion that the figure at the right is Isaiah; notes similarities to the Burial of Christ in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; suggests the influence of Giovanni Bellini.

B[ryson]. B[urroughs]. "The Meditation on the Passion by Carpaccio." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 6 (October 1911), pp. 191–92, ill. on cover, attributes it to Carpaccio; suggests that the saint on the right might be Anthony, Paul the Hermit, or Onofrio.

Tancred Borenius, ed. A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century.. By J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe and G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle. 2nd ed. [1st ed. 1871]. London, 1912, vol. 1, p. 213 n. (from p. 212), relates it to the Berlin Entombment of Christ and questions the identification of the saint on the right as Isaiah.

Adolfo Venturi. "La pittura del Quattrocento." Storia dell'arte italiana. Vol. 7, part 4, Milan, 1915, p. 758 n. 1.

Bernard Berenson. Venetian Painting in America: The Fifteenth Century. New York, 1916, pp. 157–59, fig. 63, notes the similarity of the figure of Christ to that in the Pietà in the Serristori collection in Florence, and suggests that the figure at the right may be Saint Onofrio.

Gino Fogolari. "La pittura veneziana in America." Rassegna d'arte antica e moderna 7 (May 1920), pp. 125–26, ill.

Frank Jewett Mather Jr. A History of Italian Painting. New York, 1923, pp. 368–70, fig. 248, tentatively attributes it to Carpaccio, suggesting that Giovanni Bellini may be responsible for the design and dating it about 1480; identifies the two saints as Job and Onofrio.

Wilhelm Hausenstein. Das Werk des Vittore Carpaccio. Stuttgart, 1925, pp. 138–39, pl. 65, tentatively dates it about 1505–10.

Lionello Venturi. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931, unpaginated, pl. CCCIII, dates it about 1510.

Giuseppe Fiocco. Carpaccio. Paris, 1931, pp. 74–75, pl. XCV.

Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 134.

Roberto Longhi. "Per un catalogo del Carpaccio." Vita artistica 3 (January–February 1932), pp. 8, 10 [reprinted in Opere complete di Roberto Longhi, vol. 4, "'Me pinxit' e quesiti caravaggeschi, 1928–1934," Florence, 1968, p. 78], dates it about 1500.

Lionello Venturi. Italian Paintings in America. Vol. 2, Fifteenth Century Renaissance. New York, 1933, unpaginated, pl. 408.

Hans Tietze. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935, p. 328, pl. 74 [English ed., "Masterpieces of European Painting in America," New York, 1939, p. 312, pl. 74], dates it about 1510.

Raimond van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. Vol. 18, The Renaissance Painters of Venice. The Hague, 1936, pp. 259, 262–65, 338, 359, fig. 158, notes the influence of Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, and mentions a drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin similar to the figure of Saint Jerome.

Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, pp. 186–88, ill.

Frederick Hartt. "Carpaccio's Meditation on the Passion." Art Bulletin 22 (March 1940), pp. 25–35, fig. 1, identifies the figure on the right as Job, connects him with Saint Jerome's commentary, and fully discusses the iconography.

Hans Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat. The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries. New York, 1944, pp. 83, 149, doubt Carpaccio's authorship, question the connection with the Berlin drawing which they attribute instead to Giovanni Bellini or his shop, and note the relation between the MMA painting and the verso of a drawing in the Fenwick collection, Cheltenham.

Murray Pease. "New Light on an Old Signature." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 4 (Summer 1945), pp. 1–4, ill. (overall and details of signature), and ill. on cover (detail, color), discusses the removal of the false signature of Mantegna and the discovery of the genuine one of Carpaccio.

Herbert Friedmann. The Symbolic Goldfinch: Its History and Significance in European Devotional Art. Washington, 1946, pp. 83–84, 156, observes that many of the birds and animals may have no iconographical significance; notes that the goldfinch on the back of the throne typically appears with the Infant Christ.

A[rthur]. E[wart]. Popham. "Disegni veneziani acquistati recentemente dal British Museum." Arte veneta 1 (January–March 1947), p. 229, suggests that a drawing of a seated male nude in the British Museum might be a preparatory study for this painting.

A[rthur]. E[wart]. Popham and Philip Pouncey. Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. London, 1950, p. 20.

Lillian Ross. "Profiles: How do you like it now, gentlemen?" New Yorker (May 13, 1950), p. 60 [reprinted as "Portrait of Hemingway," New York, 1961, p. 61], records Ernest Hemingway's comments on this painting during a visit to the Museum.

Edoardo Arslan. "I polittici della carità." Bollettino d'arte 36 (October–December 1951), p. 312, fig. 16 (detail).

Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1952, p. 225, no. 86, colorpl. 86.

Luigi Coletti. Pittura veneta del Quattrocento. Novara, 1953, p. LXX, pl. 154, compares it with the Berlin Entombment and calls it "stranamente signorelliana".

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 17.

Theodore Rousseau Jr. "A Guide to the Picture Galleries." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 12, part 2 (January 1954), p. 2, ill. p. 16.

Terisio Pignatti. Carpaccio. Milan, 1955, p. 72, figs. 57, 58 (overall and detail), dates it toward the end of the fifteenth century and notes echoes of Giovanni Bellini's various versions of the Pietà in Stockholm, Toledo, and the Uffizi, Florence.

Bernard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School. London, 1957, vol. 1, p. 58, pl. 426.

Giuseppe Fiocco. Carpaccio. Novara, 1958, p. 33, pls. 49a (after restoration), 49b (before restoration), erroneously as in the National Gallery, New York; observes the influence of Mantegna in this work and in the Berlin Entombment and the Sacra Conversazione (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen), dating all three paintings to about the time of the cycle of San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice (1502–7).

Terisio Pignatti. Carpaccio: Biographical and Critical Study. [Lausanne], 1958, pp. 17, 52–54, ill. (color), observes the influence of Cossa and Roberti.

Guido Perocco. Tutta la pittura del Carpaccio. Milan, 1960, pp. 23–24, 64, pls. 122–23 (overall and detail), observes Flemish influence in the landscape, notes the Ferrarese connection, and suggests that Saint Jerome might be a portrait.

Fritz Heinemann. Giovanni Bellini e i Belliniani. Venice, [1962], vol. 1, p. 232, no. V.100; vol. 2, fig. 845 (detail).

Jan Lauts. Carpaccio: Paintings and Drawings. London, 1962, pp. 13–14, 246, no. 63, ill. p. 12 (detail) and pls. 3–5 (overall and details), dates it about 1485 on the basis of the close relationship with Giovanni Bellini's paintings of the early 1480s, the Mantegnesque character of the landscape, and the form of the signature, which differs from signatures on works dated 1490 or later.

Pietro Zampetti. Vittore Carpaccio. Exh. cat., Palazzo Ducale. Venice, 1963, p. 233, ill. p. XLIV.

Giovanni Previtali. La fortuna dei primitivi dal Vasari ai neoclassici. Turin, 1964, p. 157 n. 4 (from p. 156), pl. XII(7) (detail), reproduces it with other works that once carried false Mantegna signatures.

Pietro Zampetti. Vittore Carpaccio. Venice, 1966, pp. 40, 43, 64, no. 18, fig. 18, accepts Lauts's date [see Ref. 1962] of 1485 or slightly later.

Michelangelo Muraro. Carpaccio. Florence, 1966, pp. 24, 75, CLX–CLXV, ill. (overall and details), compares the figure of Christ with works by Bellini in Berlin, London, and Rimini, but dates the painting about the time of Carpaccio's "Saint Thomas Aquinas Enthroned" of 1507 (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart) and his "Death of the Virgin" of about 1508 (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara).

Guido Perocco in L'opera completa del Carpaccio. Milan, 1967, pp. 105–6, no. 48, ill. (black and white, and colorpl. IL).

Giles Robertson. Giovanni Bellini. Oxford, 1968, p. 101, suggests that this painting, Giovanni Bellini's "Meditation on the Incarnation" (Uffizi, Florence, no. 631), and possibly also Bellini's San Giobbe altarpiece (Accademia, Venice, inv. no. 38) might have been executed for the same patron with a particular veneration for Job, who appears in all three pictures.

Calvin Tomkins. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1970, p. 169 [rev., enl. ed., 1989].

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 47, 264, 359, 407, 606.

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Venetian School. New York, 1973, pp. 14–16, pl. 14, note that the the inscription provides the interpretation of the scene, since through Saint Jerome's commentary on the book of Job, the sufferings of Job came to be seen as a prefiguration of the Passion of Christ [see Ref. Hartt 1940]; observe the influence of the late fifteenth-century Ferrarese school, especially Tura and Roberti, suggesting that Carpaccio painted this work at the same time as his "Death of the Virgin" of about 1508 in Ferrara and that they were both made in Ferrara.

Bernard Berenson. Looking at Pictures with Bernard Berenson. Ed. Hanna Kiel. New York, 1974, pp. 238–39, ill.

Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, p. 246, fig. 434.

Rona Goffen. Giovanni Bellini. New Haven, 1989, pp. 117–18, fig. 81, compares it with Bellini's "Sacred Allegory" (Uffizi, Florence), suggesting that Bellini's painting should also be considered a meditation on the Passion [see also Ref. Robertson 1968].

Gioia Mori. "L''iter salvationis' cristiano nel 'Seppellimento di Cristo' di Vittore Carpaccio." Storia dell'arte no. 69 (May–August 1990), pp. 164, 195 n. 5.

Peter Humfrey. Carpaccio: Catalogo completo dei dipintii. Florence, 1991, pp. 98–100, no. 25, ill. (color), dates it 1505–7; calls the head of Saint Jerome a variant of that in the "Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Catherine" (formerly Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin; destroyed 1945) and relates the figure of Christ to that in the "Dead Christ" (Magnani Rocca collection, Corte di Mamiano).

Augusto Gentili. "Giovanni Bellini, la bottega, i quadri di devozione." Venezia Cinquecento 1, no. 2 (1991), pp. 53, 56, fig. 25, sees the deer as symbolizing the gentleness of Christ and Christians and the leopards as spotted with the vices of the sinner and the cunning and savagery of the infidel and the heretic.

Frederick Hartt. "Imago biblica: Cinquant'anni tra Filippo Lippi e Carpaccio." L'arte e la bibbia: Immagine come esegesi biblica. Ed. Timothy Verdon. Settimello (Florence), 1992, pp. 171–75, fig. 45, discusses the iconography; suggests that the painting may have been made as the altarpiece for a chapel on the left in the church of San Giobbe, Venice, perhaps the one that is today dedicated to Saint Diego (canonized in 1588).

Brigit Blass-Simmen. "'Povero Giopo': Carpaccios 'Grabbereitung Christi' und die 'Scuola di San Giobbe' in Venedig." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, n.s., 35 (1993), pp. 116–18, 120, 125, 128, figs. 4, 5 (reconstruction), argues that it originally formed part of an ensemble with the Berlin Entombment and suggests a connection with the decoration of the Scuola di San Giobbe in Venice in 1504.

Vittorio Sgarbi. Carpaccio. New York, [1994], pp. 158–61, 222, no. 36, ill. (overall in black and white and color, detail in color), dates it about 1508–15; rejects Hartt's [see Ref. 1992] suggestion that it may originally have been located in the chapel of Saint Diego in the church of San Giobbe; believes that it and the Berlin Entombment were probably made for a private patron in the area of Venice, rather than in Ferrara [see Ref. Zeri and Gardner 1973].

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 75, ill.

Peter Humfrey in The Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. Vol. 5, New York, 1996, p. 821.

Claudia Cieri Via. "Disegno architettonico, decorazione e narrazione nella pittura urbinate del Quattrocento." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, p. 133.

Augusto Gentili. "Bellini and Landscape." The Cambridge Companion to Giovanni Bellini. Ed. Peter Humfrey. Cambridge, 2004, p. 309 n. 18.

Timothy Verdon in L'arte cristiana in italia. Vol. 2, Rinascimento. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2006, pp. 206–7, fig. 214 (color), dates it about 1490; notes that Christ seems more asleep than dead; sees the bird above Him as a symbol of the soul.

Giovanni Agosti. Su Mantegna. Vol. 1, La storia dell'arte libera la testa. 2nd ed. Milan, 2006, p. 82, pls. 2–3 (detail), reproduces pl. XII from Ref. Previtali 1964.

Brigit Blass-Simmen. "'Studi dal vivo e dal non più vivo': Carpaccio's Passion Paintings with Saint Job." Metropolitan Museum Journal 41 (2006), pp. 75–90, colorpl. 4, figs. 1, 2 (reconstruction), 6, 9, 20, 24, 35 (details), dates it about 1480–1505; discusses the use of model-drawings, as well as borrowings from other artists, for motifs in this painting; notes that the same cartoon was used for the body of Job in the MMA and Berlin paintings, that the jawbone recurs in the Berlin picture and in Carpaccio's "Saint George and the Dragon" (Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice), and that the skull reappears in the Venice work.

Guillaume Cassegrain in Titien, Tintoret, Véronèse . . . Rivalités à Venise. Ed. Vincent Delieuvin et al. Exh. cat., Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2009, p. 399.

Elfriede R. Knauer. "A Venetian Vignette One Hundred Years after Marco Polo." Metropolitan Museum Journal 44 (2009), pp. 53–55, 57 nn. 30, 34, fig. 11 (color).

Valentina Hristova in Primitifs italiens: le vrai, le faux, la fortune critique. Ed. Esther Moench. Exh. cat., Palais Fesch-musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio. Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2012, pp. 124, 127 n. 20, fig. 9 (color).

Giorgio Fossaluzza in The Alana Collection. Ed. Sonia Chiodo and Serena Padovani. Vol. 3, Italian Paintings from the 14th to 16th Century. Florence, 2014, p. 265.

Master Paintings: Part I. Sotheby's, New York. January 29, 2015, p. 50, fig. 1 (color), under no. 16, dates it 1508–15 and relates the figure of Christ to that in "The Lamentation" (no. 16, oil on wood, 17 x 14 in.) and in another panel sold at Christie's, London, December 7, 2010, no. 2, stating that all three are presumably based on a drawing on the verso of a study (British Museum, London) for the "Arrival in Rome" from the Scuola di Sant'Orsola cycle now in the Accademia, Venice, which dates to the 1490s.

Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli. Giovanni Bellini e la pittura veneta a Berlino: Le collezioni di James Simon e Edward Solly alla Gemäldegalerie. Verona, 2015, pp. 227–29, 233 n. 47, ill. p. 230 (color), compares it to the Gemäldegalerie's "Preparation of Christ's Tomb," which had also been previously attributed to Andrea Mantegna.

Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 270, no. 157, ill. pp. 164, 270 (color).

Sara Menato. Per la giovinezza di Carpaccio. Padua, 2016, pp. 2, 10, 14, 26, 28–31, 33–34, 37, 41 n. 120, fig. 18 (color).

Alessandra Pattanaro in Sara Menato. Per la giovanezza di Carpaccio. Padua, 2016, p. x.

Giorgia Mancini and Nicholas Penny. The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings. Vol. 3, Bologna and Ferrara. London, 2016, p. 145 n. 29.

Susannah Rutherglen in Giovanni Bellini: Landscapes of Faith in Renaissance Venice. Ed. Davide Gasparotto. Exh. cat., J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles, 2017, p. 128, fig. 44 (color).

Atara Moscovich. "The Lion and the Wisdom—The Multiple Meanings of the Lion as One of the Keys for Deciphering Vittore Carpaccio's 'Meditation on the Passion'." Religions vol. 10 (May 27, 2019), figs. 1–2 (color, overall and detail) [https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/5/344/htm], argues that the lion to left of Christ’s throne alludes symbolically to the resurrected Christ, Christ’s divine nature, and the lion as a personification of Venice.

Atara Moscovich. "A Leopard or a Panther? The Pairs of the Stag and the Predator in Vittore Carpaccio's 'Meditation on the Passion'." Review of European Studies vol. 11 (November 22, 2019), figs. 1–4 (color, overall and details) [https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/res/article/view/0/41350] , reinterprets the symbolism of the stag and predators.

Peter Humfrey. Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington and Fondazione Musei Civici, Palazzo Ducale, Venice. New Haven, 2022, pp. 10–11, 16, 20, 25 n. 19, pp. 150–52, 154, 214, 218, 292–93, 300, no. 18, ill. pp. 10, 151 (color, overall and detail), believes it was probably painted for a domestic context, for a semipublic reception room where it could be discussed with family and friends; disagrees with Blass-Simmen [see Ref. 1993] that it and the Berlin picture were commissioned for the meeting room of the Scuola di San Giobbe since they do not resemble altarpieces or narrative paintings customary for these kinds of rooms and there is no record of other paintings to balance them on the opposite side of the altar; supposes that the "unusual prominence" of Job in both paintings could have simply been due to the patron's proximity to the Church of San Giobbe or that he was a member of the confraternity; disagrees with Ballarin and Menato that the two paintings were executed around the same time and thinks it is more probable that the patron returned to Carpaccio for a second painting two decades later.

Joanna Dunn in Peter Humfrey. Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington and Fondazione Musei Civici, Palazzo Ducale, Venice. New Haven, 2022, p. 82, posits that since there are very few pentimenti, the underdrawing was done in red chalk, iron gall ink, or metalpoint, which are difficult to detect with infrared reflectography.

Linda Borean in Peter Humfrey. Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington and Fondazione Musei Civici, Palazzo Ducale, Venice. New Haven, 2022, pp. 91, 97 n. 11.

Susannah Rutherglen in Peter Humfrey. Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington and Fondazione Musei Civici, Palazzo Ducale, Venice. New Haven, 2022, p. 181.

Atara Moscovich. "'His Soul Within Him Shall Mourn': Job as a Bereaved Father in Venetian Renaissance Art." International Visual Culture Review 13, no. 1 (2023), pp. 41, 45–58, 60, figs. 5, 11, 13–17, 19 (color, overall and details).

The frame is from Venice and dates to about 1560 (see figs. 1–4 above). This giltwood cassetta frame made of pine is constructed of a half-lapped tenon joined back frame to which the mitred face moldings are applied. The sight edge molding is duplicated and enlarged on the other side of the cushioned frieze. An outer molding, which rises to a narrow fillet at the top edge, was added. The frieze is ornamented with candelabra-patterned molded cartapesta. The frame was reduced at the upper right and lower left corners and may have then been regilded over what may have been a polychrome surface. This frame was paired with the painting in 2013. Funds were generously provided by J. Tomilson Hill.

Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2020; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files

Loan of this work is restricted.